[Magdalen] Busy Triduum

[Roger Stokes]

On 31/03/2015 19:10, Scott Knitter wrote:
> Thanks to parishioners who have left (temporarily, one hopes) in anger
> over staff changes, the liturgical rota is having to be filled by a
> suddenly reduced group of people. Our saintly head MC is juggling
> twice as many things in addition to guiding those who serve through
> the Holy Week liturgies while keeping up with changes to the same
> (which changes are good ones; Palm Sunday was wonderful and not
> head-spinning). The effect on me is that I have to serve as subdeacon
> at every Triduum liturgy: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Great Vigil,
> and Easter Day main Mass. While this appeals to my excessive desire to
> feel needed, it'll be busy and distracting, as every liturgy has a
> rehearsal, stuff to remember, and stuff to think ahead about rather
> than focus on what is happening in the moment.

Before Iretired the Vigil was my biggest headache of the year.  You do 
it once a year and so I found it hard to enter into as the presding 
minister.  I was so concerned with getting it right.  The church of the 
parish where I now live is used to having baptism and confirmation at 
the Vigil, but not the Eucharist.  I discovered on Sunday that tghe new 
Vicar (equivalent to TEC Rector) is including the Eucharist and after 
the service I thanked him for doing so, thus completing the rite.

A long-standing member of the congregation who was standing by us 
expressed his displeasure with this departure from "tradition" so I 
pointed out that it was a return to the long-standing tradition of the 
Church that was mentioned in the introduction to the Ash Wednesday 
liturgy but he was still not happy.  I hope that Fr Kevin felt my 
backing of his decision was helpful.  He is planning a number of 
changes, the details of which I do not know, but he has the right to do 
so and I will back him even though it looks as if I will be elsewhere 
more Sundays in the future.

I already have bookings for a pair of parishes and expect requests from 
somewhere else that becomes vacant in May when their Rector heads for 
Cyprus.  The supply of reasonably able priests without parochial cure is 
diminishing.

Roger

>
> It isn't arduous, so I pray I'll be able to enter in fully and offer
> the subdeacon service as part of my prayer. And in a way it's payback
> for last year when I think I couldn't be there at all until Sunday
> morning thanks to a project for work.
>
> And I wish the head MC were not so stingy about training additional
> subdeacons: he sticks to four trained ones at any given time, so they
> can each serve about one Sunday a month and not forget how to do it
> between those times. We do have a female subdeacon now, and she does a
> superb job at it, but she's direly needed as a thurifer. I've been
> asked to get trained as a thurifer but have resisted so far as I want
> to reduce such things, not take on more of them. We just need more
> people stepping up, especially since several key ones have stepped
> out.
>
> It'll be holy and wonderful...we've got a guest preacher, the Rev.
> Robert MacSwain of Sewanee, and our choir is sounding excellent again
> with interim director Simon Thomas Jacobs. And our rector is clearly
> at home and happiest in liturgy; so nice not to have to spend this
> week on pins and needles trying to avoid ticking off our late rector
> who was at an emotional low every Lent and especially Holy Week (a
> favorite expression of his every year: "Lord, who threw out these
> forty days?").
>